1 1 4 J? /SEN B y PERSE VE RANGE. 



though I succeeded in amusing myself, I was no trifler. 

 The shores of Cromarty are strewed over with water-rolled 

 fragments of the primary rocks, derived chiefly from the 

 west during the ages of the boulder clay ; and I soon learned 

 to take a deep interest in sauntering over the various pebble 

 beds when shaken up by recent storms, and in learning to 

 distinguish their numerous components. But I was sadly in 

 want of a vocabulary ; and as, according to Cowper, " the 

 growth of what is excellent is slow," it was not until long 

 after that I bethought me of the obvious enough expedient 

 of representing the various species of simple rocks by certain 

 numerals, and the compound ones by the numerals repre- 

 sentative of each separate component, ranged, as in vulgar 

 fractions, along a medial line, with the figures representative 

 of the prevailing materials of the mass above, and those 

 representative of the materials in less proportions below. 

 Though, however, wholly deficient in the signs proper to 

 represent what I knew, I soon acquired a considerable quick- 

 ness of eye in distinguishing the various kinds of rock, and 

 tolerably definite conceptions of the generic character of the 

 porphyries, granites, gneisses, quartz rocks, clay slates, and 

 mica schists which everywhere strewed the beach. In the 

 rocks of mechanical origin I was at this time much less in- 

 terested ; but in individual, as in general history, mineralogy 

 almost always precedes geology.' 



When twelve years of age. Miller wrote some verses on a 

 singular adventure which he and another companion ex- 

 perienced in a place called the Doocot Cave. He wrote 

 four successive accounts of this experience. The first was 

 executed in enormously bad verse, which, however, excited 

 the wonder of Miss Bond, the mistress of the Cromarty 



